<- Menno's school This week was a quiet and at the same time busy week. We didn’t have any “classes” and so I could dedicate myself to marking some dissertations and other activities that don’t have the “priority of the day”. As for the dissertations, in our school we had a discussion whether these research assignments should be called “dissertations” or “ thesis”. Since about eight years, we have been an international school. The official language is English, although a minority of the students doesn’t speak Dutch. But it must be English otherwise there would be no international students at all. So we decided that it should be “dissertation”. I was so happy that one of them was really good, it was a research in a “big” hotel (there are almost no big hotels in the Netherlands, although Amsterdam is overcrowded with 5-star luxury hotels) to the extent of work-related stress, potentially leading to burn-out. The hotel industry in our country is, next to the “education industry”, the branch of industry with the highest percentage of stress victims. Furthermore, I wrote a column for our school-magazine. It was in Dutch, every now and then I write a column in Dutch and I notice much more response from colleagues and students when it is in Dutch then when it is, as usual, in English. I use Dutch when the topic is typical Dutch. This time it was the Dutch army in 1965, when I was a soldier. I represented the school as a military unit and described the beginning of a working day, with the morning roll. The “team leaders” and the dean were the sergeants and the captain, respectively, and the captain held a briefing speech in which some current school developments were “explained”. Some colleagues were reproved because they didn’t shave properly, had to buy a new jacket, were too late with their drill movements etc. At the end I wrote that now everything was clear, but that I awoke from a dream and had to make the journey to my school again. I wondered if some parts wouldn’t be too “sharp” but I decided not to exercise self-censoring.
I also attended a small training course in coaching students during a half-year improvement project in a hotel or restaurant. Teams of 3d-year students go to a company and diagnose its business situation. They have to do literature research, market research and operational research, their goal is improving a business area with at least 5%: 5% more profit, 5% more patronage, 5% more guest satisfaction, whatever relevant. This had to be conducted like a real-life project done by a business consultation company, completely with a contract, project planning and –monitoring, reports, and (a start of) implementation of intervention measures. In the meantime they have to do peer-assessment. Really tough.
Furthermore I had a so-called “ten minutes talk” at my son’s (9 year) school, which I found really satisfying (see picture, when you want to see more about Hurdegaryp, please click here, don't let you deter by Dutch, under "foto's" you can see many nice pictures). His strengths and weaknesses were discussed and we agreed on what to be alert on both in school and at home. Also I had talks with Janine about her school situation, which is far more complicated than mine. She has to teach “theoretical support” to adolescents who often see school as something they have to do, but often hate. A real motivation challenge. My students are older and really strive for an international hotel career, and like many aspects of school. She has to deal with situations not really focused on study or reflection, but on practical problem solving, “theory” is often considered as ballast, and practice trainees as “cheap hands” in cost-cutting health care institutions (elderly homes, mentally deprived homes, etc.). Everything that explains things on paper is called “theory”, everything that can be instructed by practising, is the “real work”, and paper is what too many of her students hate. Well, maybe they are right, and too many “theories” haven been produced by too many desk workers, but even in the kitchen, no chef got his position if (s)he wouldn’t have studied books on hygiene, recipes, ingredients, kitchen management etc.
Then I had my blogs. I find it a wonder, how three people from totally different places discuss about something on my blog. That “something” I picked up from the blog of one of them. It is a wonder and a challenge, because my weakness is that I can be quite rude and, by consequence, misunderstood by people, so I see it as sharpening my communication skills as well. I have to get used to the fact that these communications are multi-lateral, so I can’t communicate directly with them, only on the public “posting board” visible for everybody. But I think that it’s just this feature that urges one to watch his words and retain respect for everybody’s sincere opinion.
I also could fulfil a long existing desire, namely publication of my translation of Goethe’s poetry bundle “West-eastern divan” in Dutch. I experienced that editors are reluctant to publish things like these because of the small Dutch market. I could produce an e-book, but this also will cost me financing in advance. So now I opened a new blog on my Google-account to publish it on Internet, who knows what will happen afterwards (http://goethe-divan.blogspot.com) . When there is enough on it to assess its quality by competent and interested readers, I’ll try to interest some newspapers to publish a story so that more people will visit the blog. They are also invited to submit their own poems to be published between the poems by Goethe.
I also attended a small training course in coaching students during a half-year improvement project in a hotel or restaurant. Teams of 3d-year students go to a company and diagnose its business situation. They have to do literature research, market research and operational research, their goal is improving a business area with at least 5%: 5% more profit, 5% more patronage, 5% more guest satisfaction, whatever relevant. This had to be conducted like a real-life project done by a business consultation company, completely with a contract, project planning and –monitoring, reports, and (a start of) implementation of intervention measures. In the meantime they have to do peer-assessment. Really tough.
Furthermore I had a so-called “ten minutes talk” at my son’s (9 year) school, which I found really satisfying (see picture, when you want to see more about Hurdegaryp, please click here, don't let you deter by Dutch, under "foto's" you can see many nice pictures). His strengths and weaknesses were discussed and we agreed on what to be alert on both in school and at home. Also I had talks with Janine about her school situation, which is far more complicated than mine. She has to teach “theoretical support” to adolescents who often see school as something they have to do, but often hate. A real motivation challenge. My students are older and really strive for an international hotel career, and like many aspects of school. She has to deal with situations not really focused on study or reflection, but on practical problem solving, “theory” is often considered as ballast, and practice trainees as “cheap hands” in cost-cutting health care institutions (elderly homes, mentally deprived homes, etc.). Everything that explains things on paper is called “theory”, everything that can be instructed by practising, is the “real work”, and paper is what too many of her students hate. Well, maybe they are right, and too many “theories” haven been produced by too many desk workers, but even in the kitchen, no chef got his position if (s)he wouldn’t have studied books on hygiene, recipes, ingredients, kitchen management etc.
Then I had my blogs. I find it a wonder, how three people from totally different places discuss about something on my blog. That “something” I picked up from the blog of one of them. It is a wonder and a challenge, because my weakness is that I can be quite rude and, by consequence, misunderstood by people, so I see it as sharpening my communication skills as well. I have to get used to the fact that these communications are multi-lateral, so I can’t communicate directly with them, only on the public “posting board” visible for everybody. But I think that it’s just this feature that urges one to watch his words and retain respect for everybody’s sincere opinion.
I also could fulfil a long existing desire, namely publication of my translation of Goethe’s poetry bundle “West-eastern divan” in Dutch. I experienced that editors are reluctant to publish things like these because of the small Dutch market. I could produce an e-book, but this also will cost me financing in advance. So now I opened a new blog on my Google-account to publish it on Internet, who knows what will happen afterwards (http://goethe-divan.blogspot.com) . When there is enough on it to assess its quality by competent and interested readers, I’ll try to interest some newspapers to publish a story so that more people will visit the blog. They are also invited to submit their own poems to be published between the poems by Goethe.
3 comments:
In teacher certification programs in American universities, there often is a divide between the "curriculum and instruction" people who teach hands-on classroom management techniques, lesson planning, etc., and the "foundations" people (like me) who teach the theoretical stuff: philosophy, sociology, etc. The curriculum people tend to think that the foundations people don't comprehend the "real world." They think that as long as you get the "methods" right, the theory doesn't matter. Notwithstanding the fact that most of them have Ph.D.s, my opinion is that people with that attitude are absolutely clueless. I can't for the life of me figure out why they don't understand that the "methods" they embrace are embedded in, if not determined by, philosophical, historical and sociological contexts. True understanding of the methods requires understanding of the theories behind them. Theoretical understanding allows one to determine when methods need to be revised and what revisions will remain consistent with their overall approach to teaching. There's a reason the "foundations" disciplines are labelled as such: they are the foundations, the real life bases of knowledge, out of which techniques develop.
In Holland we have a saying: "the shirt is nearer to the body than the jacket", which applies to the situation that people tend to find their own situation as more important than someone else's, or that they find the immediate observable more important than what's behind it. We don't have such division traditionally, but since 10-15 years ago we get confronted with "curriculum-designers" who develop blueprints in which the learning content is cast. We could discuss a lot about the pros and cons, but we teachers agree that these "educationalists" as they are called, often get into conflict with what we teachers find important, because they follow management rules and instructions. The management pursues company-like goals such as "as many students as possible graduated in the shortest possible time, with as less staff as possible". Quantity and money often gets priority over quality of content. The "educationalists" help them to retain quality by standardisation. We also speak of the "McDonaldisation of Education". At our school all this can be noticed, but also that we get used to it more or less, and we keep the damage within limits. We cannot return to times in which the teachers were omnipotent in determining the curriculum and its contents, it would be too costly and the school would be too dependent on the quality of the teachers. We are also dependent on government financing and can charge tuiton fees only at a standard level determined by law. The difference with my wife's school is that her school educates young students (only teenagers)for assistant jobs in health and social care, where they need some theory as a basis, e.g. for knowing about psychology of elderly people, know about how to deal with Altzheimer patients, with handicapped children etc.; their expectations and motivations however are often directed to simply "helping people" without being aware that some theoretical knowledge is required (the shirt under the jacket), or they chose this study because other ones were expected to be "more difficult". My students are fully aware that they need theoretical knowledge to solve management problems, and are very motivated (but sometimes their flesh is weaker than their spirit, just as mine by the way).
Help, what a long text! That's what one gets when talking about work!
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